Dawgs By Nature
The Cleveland Browns are a tale of two halves. From 1946 to 1995, the franchise captured eight pro football titles, tied with the New York Football Giants for the third most behind the Green Bay Packers (13) and Chicago Bears (9).
The Browns hold the record for most consecutive appearances in the league championship game with 10 straight, winning seven titles.
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Cleveland merged into the NFL for the 1950 season. The NFL commissioner, Bert Bell, had stated that the NFL’s worst team could defeat its league’s champion any day of the week. “Their league” was the rival entity, the All-America Football Conference. In their first NFL game, the Browns destroyed the reigning NFL champions, the Philadelphia Eagles. At season’s end, Cleveland defeated the Los Angeles Rams for their first NFL title.
The first half of the Browns history was also one of the best teams in the league in the 1980s, going to three AFC Championship Games, losing them all. Under Marty Schottenheimer, Cleveland went to the playoffs all four years he was installed as head coach.
Bill Belichick got the Browns back to the playoffs in 1994 with an 11-5-0 record. The “Pro Football Issue” of Sports Illustrated predicted that the Browns and the Dallas Cowboys would play in the following Super Bowl. Instead, Cleveland announced plans to relocate to Baltimore.
So, for the second half, after the new Browns came on scene in 1999, there is an endless line of starting quarterbacks, head coaches, GMs, losing seasons, and only a few playoff appearances.
The last championship for the Browns was in 1964. Roger Shoals was a second-year offensive tackle on that roster.
Blanton Collier had been Paul Brown’s offensive mind since the team began in 1946. Collier left Cleveland from 1954 to 1961 to become the head coach at the University of Kentucky, then returned to the Browns for the 1962 season. Cleveland finished 7-6-1, their fourth straight year to miss the playoffs. Browns owner Art Modell then fired Brown from his head coaching position, and moved him to the team’s Vice President. Next, he moved Collier to head coach.
Shoals (6’-4”, 260 pounds) played college sports at the University of Maryland after a short stint in the Army. In football, he was a two-time All-Atlantic Coast Conference selection, plus he was also a two-time ACC heavyweight wrestling champion.
He grew up in Norwalk, Connecticut, and attended Norwalk High School, where he played football and intramural volleyball. As was the custom in those days, Shoals was a two-way lineman for the Green and White who was named First Team All-State and was voted a high school All-American in his senior year.
After a standout collegiate career at Maryland, he was drafted by the Dallas Texans of the American Football League and the Browns of the NFL. Shoals spent his first two seasons in Cleveland, then was traded to the Detroit Lions for six years, and finally was traded to the Denver Broncos for...
